AURORA — A new physical fitness test used to screen Aurora Police candidates is based not on the number of timed sit-ups or push-ups a person can do, but on activities more closely related to actual police work.
In April, the Aurora Police Department suspended its fitness test after the Department of Justice requested five years of fitness entrance test results to see if the test discriminated against women.
The Aurora Civil Service Commission “made a change to substitute a job-function test that attempts to more closely mirror the types of physical activity associated with police work,” city attorney Charlie Richardson said.
The new test, announced last week, will be used for the first time during the November police academy.
One part will be timed. A test monitor will tell a participant sitting in a patrol car to pursue a fictitious felony suspect on the run.
Within 60 seconds, the person must get out of the car, run a total course distance of about 130 yards and negotiate an obstacle course.
This includes crawling under a standard-size office table, climbing through a window and then running to a set of stairs.
After climbing the stairs, the participant must then identify the proper suspect from four targets, each numbered and dressed differently.
The participant also must move a dummy weighing about 150 pounds from a chair across a designated line 5 feet away.
The untimed part of the test requires climbing a 6-foot chain-link fence in a “slow and deliberate” manner.
It is untimed because of concerns by Police Chief Dan Oates that incumbent officers had gotten hurt on a timed version of the fence climb .
While some injuries were minor, other “officers suffered knee injuries that required extensive rehabilitation, substantial medical costs to the city, and significant injury leave and lost productivity,” according to a May 24 memo to the Aurora Civil Service Commission from Roger Cloyd, chief of the Investigative Division.
“At least one officer was forced to medically retire due to her knee injury,” the memo said.
Richardson advised that eliminating the time requirement would not invalidate the test.
